Tag: Sicker

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Health

The Delta Variant Is Sending Extra Kids to the Hospital. Are They Sicker, Too?

The Delta Variant Is Sending More Children to the Hospital. Are They Sicker, Too?

What is clear is that a confluence of factors – including Delta’s contagiousness and the fact that people under the age of 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination – will result in more children being hospitalized, especially in areas of the country in where the virus is increasing. “If you have more cases then of course it eventually comes down to the kids,” said Dr. Malley.

Many children’s hospitals had hoped for a quiet summer. Several common childhood viruses are less common in the warmer months, and national Covid rates declined in the spring.

But that started to change last month as Delta spread. “The number of positive Covid tests began to rise in early July,” said Marcy Doderer, president and chief executive officer of Arkansas Children’s Hospital. “And then we really started to see the kids get sick.”

The vaccines are effective against Delta – and offer strong protection from serious illness and death – but children under 12 are not yet eligible for them. As more adults are vaccinated, children make up an increasing proportion of Covid cases; between July 22 and July 29, they accounted for 19 percent of reported new cases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“They’re the unvaccinated,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford Medicine and chair of the AAP Infectious Diseases Committee. “We see all new infections there.”

According to the association, almost 72,000 new pediatric Covid cases were reported from July 22 to July 29, almost twice as many as in the previous week. At Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, 181 children tested positive for the virus in July, up from just 12 in June.

Most of these children have relatively mild symptoms such as runny nose, constipation, cough, or fever, said Dr. Wassam Rahman, the medical director of the Pediatric Emergency Center at All Children’s. “Most children are not very sick,” he said. “Most of them will go home and receive preventive treatment at home. But as you can imagine, families are scared. “

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Health

Is the Delta Variant Making Youthful Adults ‘Sicker, Faster’?

Is the Delta Variant Making Younger Adults ‘Sicker, Quicker’?

Many patients who are hospitalized have underlying health conditions like diabetes, obesity or high blood pressure, which are risk factors for serious illness, he said. However, some younger patients do not have any of these risk factors.

“That really scares me,” he said. “It hits younger healthy people who you wouldn’t believe would respond so badly to the disease.” They often need to recover longer, added Dr. Coulter, and some will have permanent lung damage.

The Delta variant is relatively new in the United States, and evidence is still mounting as to whether and how it behaves differently. It’s more contagious, experts agree. Some studies have shown that infected people may carry large amounts of the variant in their airways.

The variant can also cause more serious illnesses, some researchers have suggested. A study in Scotland published in The Lancet looked at Covid cases in the spring when Delta became the dominant strain in that country.

Patients infected with the variant were almost twice as likely to be hospitalized compared to those infected with the earlier alpha variant. The patients were also younger, presumably because they were last vaccinated, the authors said.

In a preliminary study published online and not yet peer reviewed, Canadian researchers found that the risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit was almost four times higher in patients with the Delta variant than in those infected with other variants. Patients with the Delta variant had twice the risk of hospitalization or death.

Research in Singapore to be published in The Lancet concluded that patients with the Delta variant were more likely to need oxygen, need intensive care, or die. And a study in India, also put online and not yet peer-reviewed, found that in the second wave of infections, when the Delta variant was dominant, patients had a higher risk of death, especially under 45 years of age.

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Health

CDC warns as contagious as chickenpox, could make individuals sicker

CDC warns as contagious as chickenpox, may make people sicker

The CDC warned House lawmakers that the delta variant sweeping across the country is as contagious as chickenpox, has a longer transmission window than the original Covid-19 strain and may make older people sicker, even if they’ve been fully vaccinated.

The warning on Thursday was made in a confidential document that was reviewed by CNBC and authenticated by the federal health agency.

Delta, now in at least 132 countries and already the dominant form of the disease in the United States, is more transmissible than the common cold, the 1918 Spanish flu, smallpox, Ebola, MERS and SARS, according to the document. Only measles appears to spread faster than the variant.

“The war has changed,” officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote.

Healthcare personnel work in a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) intensive care unit where they are dealing with a surge in cases of the Delta variant at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, U.S., in this handout photo provided July 23, 2021.

Intermountain Health | Reuters

Health officials said federal and state leaders should communicate to the public the benefits of getting vaccinated, adding the Covid vaccine shots reduce the risk of severe disease and death “10-fold or greater” and reduce the risk of infection “3-fold.”

Vaccines prevent more than 90% of severe disease, but may be less effective at preventing infection, they said, making community spread among the vaccinated more likely. The document said 35,000 symptomatic infections are occurring per week among 162 million vaccinated Americans.

Separately, the CDC has said 5,914 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized or have died with Covid infections as of July 19, the most recent data available. Breakthrough cases, which occur in the fully vaccinated, happen more frequently in gatherings of people and in groups at risk of primary vaccine failure, according to the document.

Health officials also said federal and state leaders should consider vaccine mandates, particularly for health-care workers, universal masking and other community mitigation strategies. President Joe Biden announced on Thursday his administration would require federal workers to prove their vaccination status or submit to a series of rigorous safety protocols.

The documents presented to lawmakers came two days after the CDC reversed course on its prior guidance and recommended fully vaccinated Americans who live in areas with high Covid infection rates resume wearing face masks indoors. The guidelines cover about two-thirds of the U.S. population, according to a CNBC analysis.

“My first thoughts in reading it was that everything is a little bit worse than I thought,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who reviewed the document.

“This document and some of the other information says you’ve got to be open to the possibility that delta is worse in a number of ways and may upend some of our prior assumptions in ways that are meaningful,” he said.

Dr. Paul Offit, who advises the FDA on Covid vaccines, said Friday it is “profoundly” upsetting that the U.S. hasn’t gotten a critical portion of the population vaccinated, adding delta has “changed the game.” About half of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.

“Yesterday, you had 90,000 cases and close to 400 deaths,” Offit said. “Those are same numbers you saw last summer. I mean, last summer, you had a fully susceptible population and you had no vaccine.”

He said the CDC documents highlight just how “frustrated” federal officials are, given that there are safe and effective vaccines.

“The war isn’t against the virus anymore. It’s also at some level a war against ourselves,” he said.

People infected with the delta variant carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than other strains, resulting in higher transmissibility, even among the vaccinated, according to federal health officials. The CDC noted that studies in Canada, Singapore and Scotland found higher odds of hospitalization, ICU admission, oxygen needs, pneumonia or death among people infected with the delta variant.

While the variant, which surfaced in India, continues to hit unvaccinated people the hardest, some vaccinated people could be carrying higher levels of the virus than previously understood and are potentially transmitting it to others, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday. She added the variant behaves “uniquely differently from past strains of the virus.”

“This pandemic continues to pose a serious threat to the health of all Americans,” Walensky told reporters on a call.

Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, said Walensky and White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci briefed the committee on the new data Thursday.

“I am deeply concerned about the rapidly increasing rates of coronavirus infections in states around the country that is being driven by the Delta variant,” Clyburn said in a statement, noting that Covid cases have increased by 145% in the last two weeks and hospitalizations and deaths are rising again, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates. “This sudden turn of events threatens to undermine the significant progress we have made this year to overcome the pandemic.”

–CNBC’s Rich Mendez, Robert Towey and Nate Rattner contributed to this report.

Download the full CDC presentation here.

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Business

Trump was sicker from Covid than the general public was instructed, report says

Trump was sicker from Covid than the public was told, report says

President Donald Trump takes off his face mask as he poses on the Truman Balcony of the White House after returning from Walter Reed Hospital to treat Covid-19 in Washington, United States, on October 5, 2020.

Erin Scott | Reuters

Former President Donald Trump was more ill with the coronavirus in October than the public said at the time, a new report said.

Trump had “at one point extremely low blood oxygen levels and a lung problem related to coronavirus-related pneumonia,” reported the New York Times, citing four people familiar with his condition after contracting Covid-19.

His condition was so poor that “officials believed he was on a ventilator” before he was taken from the White House to the Walter Reed National Military Center.

The Times noted that when Trump went to the hospital in early October – a month before the presidential election – his medical team tried to downplay the severity of his condition in comments to the public.

Trump left the hospital three days after experimental treatments.

He had attended a personal debate with then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden just two days before Covid was announced.

Biden beat Trump in the election that came after Trump downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic for months.

Read the full New York Times story here.

Categories
Politics

Trump Was Sicker Than Acknowledged With Covid-19

Trump Was Sicker Than Acknowledged With Covid-19

WASHINGTON – President Donald J. Trump was sicker with Covid-19 in October than was publicly recognized at the time, with extremely low blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem related to coronavirus-related pneumonia, according to four people familiar with him.

His prognosis became so worrying before he was taken to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he needed to be put on a ventilator, said two of those familiar with his condition.

Those familiar with Mr. Trump’s health reported having pulmonary infiltrates, which occur when the lungs are inflamed and contain substances such as fluid or bacteria. Their presence, especially when a patient shows other symptoms, can be a sign of an acute case of illness. They can be easily spotted on an x-ray or scan if parts of the lungs appear opaque or white.

Mr Trump’s blood oxygen levels alone were of extreme concern and, according to those familiar with his assessment, went back to the 1980s. The disease is considered severe when blood oxygen levels drop to the low 90s.

It was previously reported that Mr Trump had difficulty breathing and a fever on October 2, the day he was rushed to the hospital, and the type of treatment he was receiving indicated that his condition was serious. But the new details about his condition and efforts in the White House to give him special access to an unapproved drug to fight the virus help cement one of the worst episodes of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

The new revelations about Mr. Trump’s fight against the virus also underscore the limited and sometimes misleading nature of the information released about his condition at the time.

The former president resisted the handover from the White House to Walter Reed and relented when aides told him he could go alone or risk waiting until U.S. intelligence was forced to take him out if he fell ill, two people familiar with the events said.

While Mr. Trump was hospitalized with Walter Reed, his medical team tried to downplay the gravity of the situation, saying he was on an upswing. At 74 years of age and overweight, he was at risk for serious illness and received aggressive treatment. He left the hospital after three days of taking a short ride in his armored sport utility vehicle to wave to the crowd of trailers in front of the building.

A person close to the former president denied being seriously ill and reiterated the comments Mr Trump himself made after his illness.

There are still unanswered questions about whether Mr Trump was already ill with Covid-19 when he attended a presidential debate on September 29, just two days before the public announcement that he was diagnosed with the disease and three days before his deteriorating condition forced him to go to Walter Reed.

Trump’s doctor, Dr. Sean P. Conley, repeatedly downplayed concerns about Mr. Trump’s condition during his illness. At a briefing, Dr. Conley that Mr. Trump received X-rays and CT scans. When asked if there were signs of pneumonia or tissue damage, however, he said only that “the findings are expected but there are no major clinical concerns.”

Dr. Conley also told reporters that while Mr. Trump’s oxygen levels had dropped to 93 percent, it never dropped to the “low 80s”.

Mr. Trump had difficulty breathing in the White House. He was given oxygen twice before being taken to Walter Reed as Dr. Conley confirmed after this was reported by the New York Times.

Updated

Apr. 11, 2021, 3:40 p.m. ET

While still in the White House, Mr. Trump received a drug that was developed by the biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. The antibody cocktail, which is currently not widely used, helps people who are infected with the virus fight it off.

After Mr Trump was hospitalized, he began treatment with a steroid, dexamethasone, which is usually only recommended for Covid-19 patients with severe or critical forms of the disease, often for those who need mechanical ventilation or supplemental oxygen .

And he received a five-day course on the antiviral drug remdesivir. At the time, medical experts believed his medication course was a clear signal of significant lung problems related to his lungs.

In press conferences outside the hospital this weekend, Dr. Conley presented data that suggested his patient was recovering quickly. He noted that Mr. Trump had done well on a spirometry test that measures lung capacity. “He’s everything,” said Dr. Conley. “He’s fine.”

Medical experts say a spirometry test is practically meaningless in Covid-19 patients.

When Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, tried to secretly tell reporters that the situation was worse, Mr Trump went mad, according to people who spoke to him.

On Sunday October 4th, Dr. Conley admits he’d given a rosy version of Mr. Trump’s condition.

“I tried to reflect the optimistic attitude of the team, the president and his disease progression,” he said. “I didn’t want to give any information that could steer the course of the disease in any other direction, and it turned out that we were trying to hide something that wasn’t necessarily true.”

Mr Trump’s medical team said he had a “high fever” that Friday and that his oxygen levels had dropped, requiring him to be given oxygen. Mr. Trump’s oxygen levels dropped again on Saturday.

Mr. Trump still appeared to be struggling with the disease when he returned to the White House, where he stood on a balcony in a choreographed scene, tearing off his mask and saluting his helicopter. Doctors at the time noticed how Mr. Trump used his neck muscles to breathe in those moments, a classic sign that someone’s lungs were not getting enough oxygen.

On the night of his diagnosis, October 1, White House officials sought to get the Regeneron antibody cocktail – which was not yet approved for treatment by the Food and Drug Administration at the time – to Mr Trump.

Patrick F. Philbin, a senior attorney with the White House law firm, called then FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen M. Hahn came in to discuss how the agency could approve the use of the drug for two senior administrators whom he did not want to identify, according to someone who heard about the call.

Mr. Philbin investigated how normal FDA procedures could give the President quick access to the drug. Regeneron has already approved the use of the cans, Philbin told Dr. Rooster.

Dr. Hahn and other FDA officials including Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, the federal supreme drug agency, worked to eliminate the drug through a standard procedure known as an emergency use for new drugs, often used on very sick patients who agree to conduct an experiment that the drug is still in clinical Studies tested. The agency is reviewing these patients’ medical histories to determine if treatment could pose serious risks.

Regeneron provided a pack of cans containing extras “in case of administrative problems,” said a company spokeswoman.

The extras were never returned. Dr. Conley once told staff that they sat in a refrigerator in the White House doctor’s office.

It wasn’t until the days after the application was approved that White House officials recognized that the doses were for Mr Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, who also tested positive for the coronavirus but turned down the drug, which took about an hour long intravenous infusion. The person close to the former president also denied that Ms. Trump had turned down the drug.

Around this time, when other people close to Mr. Trump were getting sick, his son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner offered to facilitate Regeneron treatment for them, two people with knowledge of the discussions said. An aide to Mr. Kushner denied that he had made such an offer at the time.

In the weeks following his hospital stay, Mr. Trump was convinced that Regeneron treatment had saved his life and told the helpers, “I am proof that it works.”

That line became a hoax among leading health officials, who asked each other if anyone would tell Mr Trump that he was, in fact, a failed clinical trial result for Regeneron, as the goal is to prevent people from being hospitalized After receiving it, a former senior administration official said.

Noah Weiland, Mark Mazzetti and Annie Karni reported from Washington and Maggie Haberman from New York. Katie Thomas reported from Chicago and Denise Grady from New York.